Blog #4 - Episode 3 of Firefly.

This installment of the Firefly series displayed a much more disturbing tone than the previous episodes. Focusing on the cannibalistic savagery of the Reavers, a mysterious race of apparently pure evil. Reavers seem to be a primal mix of rapists, cannibals, torturers, and mechanical geniuses, and tend to blur the lines between those roles. As described in an earlier episode, if they board a ship, they would “rape the crew to death, devour their flesh, and then sew your skin onto their clothes. And if you're really lucky, they'll do it in that order.” The acts they commit are so brutal and warped, that being forced to witness them commit the atrocities will result in one losing their sanity, and reverting to a Reaver himself. This all happened to a rather unlucky survivor in this episode. After watching his entire ship be submitted to the acts of the Reavers, he cut his tongue in half, mutilated his face, and began killing pretty much anyone who came within stabbing distance. Interestingly enough, military personnel don't seem to have much information about the Reavers. Although from what I've read, the military caused the Reavers to become the way they are through a failed drug experiment, the military seems to not be willing to help fix this at all. Now, I don't mean the sense of fixing where the government wants to make it right just because it's the right thing to do, because the Alliance hardly seems that altruistic. I would imagine that the government would attempt to quell the Reavers' behavior to prevent people from finding out the dark side of the government's actions. Whether I have missed the reasoning or explanation behind this or not is yet to be seen, but I can't imagine that the Alliance would let them run amok like this, especially when they are so bound and determined to recover just one little girl.